Fall Planter

Yesterday between the pumpkin patch and a birthday party I made a fall planter for my front porch.  It was such a great day!!  I love the way that my planter turned out!  I really don't feel like all the pictures do it justice.  Even my husband commented on the planter and that it looked nice.  That's big stuff, he doesn't notice much when it comes to details...

Saturday I went to a fall planting class at Wilson's Nursery (visit their website here).  At the class I made this sweet little pumpkin.  You could use this as a table centerpiece or as an outside decoration.  My kitchen table doesn't get a lot of sunlight so I'm keeping him outside unless I host something.  When I left I could wait to make a larger version for my porch.

The planter that I made looks like a lot which equals difficulty for some people -- it's super easy, promise!  I used a mixture of fall flowers.  These are all pretty hardy so they will survive lower temperatures.  But I also found out about this spray that you can purchase and it helps your plants when the temperatures get below freezing. 

I'm going to work around in a clockwise movement to tell you about the flowers that I bought.  We'll start at the top with the yellow mum.  You could of course get any color.  Right beside the mum is a pepper plant.  I got a purple version, they had red and yellow as well.  Then I got some pansies.  The white ones are trailing pansies, they will come down my pot and then the purple/blue ones are just your normal pansies.  The white thing that's in the middle is euphorbia, then I have heuchera (the purple thing), I lost the label for the green thing, but it's just a trailing plant.  There are more pansies, a cabbage and some wheat.  All of these flowers are annuals but they should last me for a while.  You could get any mixture of things.  In the pumpkin one I used lettuce and some fresh herbs so it's practical. 

I didn't have an urn or pot to put the plants in so I had to get one for my vision.  I really wanted a tall pedestool urn to put on each side of my door.  No luck though.  And I'm not an orderer, I want it when I want it.  I ended up going with one large urn that is sitting to the left of my step to get on the porch.  My porch is off center so it worked to just have one large pot and to place it on the larger side of the porch.  I got my urn at Garden Ridge for half price (yay!).  Since I didn't have a base to start with I had to buy more flowers.  A friend of mine made hers and she was able to save some of her summer plants that still looked good. 

I started by filling my urn with potting soil.  It took a bunch of potting soil.  I filled it basically to the top of the urn.  Then I started with my tallest thing, the wheat.  When you are putting your tall thing in there you don't really want to put it right in the center of the pot.  I put mine further back and to the left a little bit.  The next thing that I planted was the cabbage.  The trick to that is that you don't want to plant it straight up and down.  it won't be very pretty at all.  Instead, you want to place it at an angle.  Here's a picture of mine.  If I had planted it upright then it would have taken up more room and you would see the ugly stem.  Not exactly the look that I was going after. 

Once my cabbage was planted I finished by placing all of my other large plants.  I did the mum, the euphorbia, peppers and the heuchera.  When I planted those I also angled them.  The mum that I picked out was flat on one side.  If I wanted to plant them in the ground then it wouldn't be very pretty.  But because my mum was going around other plants the flat side was perfect. 

The last flowers that I planted was the green vine thing (real official) and the pansies.  The pansies were used as fillers.  I just plugged them in wherever I had a bald spot or a place where it needed something.  Here are some pictures of my planter moving around.  I planted all the way around.  That way, no matter where you are looking it is pretty.  If I put it against the house then I may not have worked as hard on the back.  All of my spots filled in nicely.  But if you had a bare spot or you didn't want to invest the money in the flowers then you could use a pumpkin and plop him in planter somewhere.  It would add a very nice touch. 

I have my tall things from the wheat, then the mums and peppers were a little shorter.  When I worked at a flower shop I learned that your design needs to be in the shape of a triangle.  It can be any type of triangle basically but it needs to somehow form a triangle.  At the planting workshop they talked about how it needs to be like a waterfall, it will have it's tall spots then it flows down.  With either description you will have something beautiful.  My angle for the picture isn't too good but here is a picture with the finished urn and my pumpkin on my front porch.  I need to work on my other planter that's on the other side but I don't have it in my to kill or pull up the flowers that are still blooming right now. 

I'd love to see pictures if you make a fall planter!

Happy planting,
Meghan

The "Old" Bottles

Today I'm sharing what I did with the "old" bottles that were pictured in this post.  I have to note why I'm classifying them as "old" bottles though.  Obviously they are just wine bottles.  There is nothing special about them.  They aren't some amazing thrift find or anything.  My cousin totally called me out on my old bottles.  However, my opinion on it is that once the wine is gone, they become old.  :) 

Forever ago I saved a picture from the Choose to Thrive blog.  Here is the link to the original post.  However, I've seen these pictures all over Pinterest (I've finally figured that out).  I knew when I saw the pictures that I wanted to make them to add it to my fall decorations.  Here is my finished product. 

When I saw the original posting I didn't really read it to see what her bottles were.  I search all summer for 4 bottles that I like and that would give me the look that I wanted.  She used old root beer bottles for hers.  One night while pouring a glass of wine I decided that these bottles were perfect.  I like the curve of the bottle and I'm very happy with how they turned out.

They were SO easy to do!  Once the bottles were empty, I peeled away as much of the labels as I could.  This process was not much fun.  You could do it while watching TV or when you are in class (like I did -- love online classes).  Then I soaked the bottles in warm water for about 20 minutes.  After that I used my Pampered Chef scraper for my stones and got the rest of the labels off.  I took the bottles to my cousin Sarah and she bedazzled them.  I love all the things that she can do with vinyl!  After Sarah was finished with her vinyl magic I put some wheat in the bottles and I was finished.  I love them! 

This morning I went to a fall planting group class at Wilson's, a local nursery in Frankfort.  I made an adorable fall piece and tomorrow I hope to make a large fall planter.  I'll be sharing pictures once it's finished. 

some pumpkins, old bottles, tons of orange and a whole lot of candy corn = FALL!

Guilty --- I am horrible at starting things and then getting another idea and working on that, then taking FOREVER to come back to the first idea.  Anyway, that's kind of where I am right now on my fall things.  I have many ideas and I'm still so excited about all of them but most of them are only partially started.  They are coming though, I promise!  Here are a few pictures of some of my ideas. 

These are some of the things that I've bought for fall so far.  The pumpkins are pretty much ready to go they just need something to go around them.  I have some fallish material.  I'm not much of a leaves and pumpkins kind of girl when it comes to the fall things.  Basically I just picked out some browns, greens and oranges that I loved.  I have some cones and yarn that will be so cute (again, once it's finished) - this one is totally a stolen idea from my great cousin.  She owns an awesome store in Frankfort - check out her website and see what she's blogging about.  I also have some of that awesome mesh material for a Halloween wreath.  It's all going to be great...stay tuned!

The other picture is of some wine bottles.  I saved something in my favorites (I know, still working on the pinning thing) months ago and I'm finally making that project come to life too.  That's all I have for now - the beginning of many things.  I'm sitting back with my Starbucks and some homemade banana bread now on this cool rainy day.  I'm getting ready to start cutting fabric though so look for another post coming later this week.  I know, I may become a real blogger if I start posting more than once a week.  Ha!!

Fall Wreath Tutorial

Fall is my absolute FAVORITE time of the year.  I love the colors, the smells, the weather, I just love everything about fall.  I am so excited about decorating for fall.  I have never really taken the time to decorate for fall even though I love it.  This year I'm going fall crazy!! :)  Today I'm sharing my fall wreath.  I had an idea for a wreath but it was going to be a lengthy process.  I saw a wreath tutorial on another website and I fell in love with the simplicity of it.  here is the link to the model wreath.  She put a full tutorial on her blog but I'm going to include one too, even though it's not much different.  Here is a picture of my finished fall wreath.

what you need

grapevine wreath

 large flowers - I used 3, the other tutorial used 4 flowers

berry sprigs - I used 2 five foot pieces

fluffy things

floral wire

wire cutters



First I positioned the hydrangea, my large flowers that I used.  I grouped them all together pretty close.  I used hot glue to secure the flowers. 

With the rest of the wreath I put the sprigs of beads.  I have a screen door so I used the crystal bead things instead of just colored balls.  I used wire to hold the beads down.  You could see my wire but we will cover that up in the next step. 



You can barely see the wire, but it was enough that it would make me crazy!



Then I cut the fluffy things up into individual sections.  I used hot glue to secure the fluffy things in the wreath.  I just placed them wherever I had wire or any spot that I thought I needed something else.  I really liked the idea of using the fluffy things instead of just using the beaded things. 

Then I was finished!  SO easy!!  I was pretty excited about it and when I showed my mom she requested one with sunflowers.  That's the great thing about this wreath, you can use just about any type of flower or beaded thing or even fluffy things (those are all of the official names...).  Here is a picture of my finished wreath and my Mom's.  My Mom's wreath was harder to make than mine because I had to wire in all of the sunflowers from both sides.  The grapevine wreath was a little skimpy so it wouldn't hold the sunflowers in, even with a crap-ton of glue.  Still happy with the way that it turned out and my Mom loved it - even better!  Let me know if you make one.  I'd love to see pictures!

Happy Fall,

Meghan